Quantifying social audience activation through search and comparison of custom author groupings

ABSTRACT

A system includes a memory and a processor coupled to the memory. The processor receives a first search criteria. The first search criteria specifies a first custom author crowd. The processor also receives a second search criteria. The second search criteria specifies a second custom author crowd. The processor also determines a first fluctuation of first content generated by the first custom author crowd and determines a second fluctuation of second content generated by the second custom author crowd. The processor also determines a fluctuation magnitude. The fluctuation magnitude indicates a difference between the first fluctuation to the second fluctuation.

BACKGROUND

Many people use the internet every day. Some use it to discover information such as news, recipes, phone numbers, etc. Some use the internet to communicate with others through mediums such as chat rooms, message boards, and e-mail. Traffic on the internet is large and many people use the internet for extended amounts of time.

Users of the internet may also use the internet to such a degree that advertisers can effectively market goods and services to customers or potential customers using the internet. For example, a host or administrator of a website may place advertisements on popular pages of their website. Such advertisements may be related to other parts of the website or goods that can be purchased that are related to the website. In another example, such advertisements can be unrelated to the website. For example, the website host or administrator may sell space to advertise on and within the website to third parties, much like a billboard might sell or lease ad space to third parties who would like passersby to see the advertisement.

SUMMARY

A system includes a memory and a processor coupled to the memory. The processor receives a first search criteria. The first search criteria specifies a first custom author crowd. The processor also receives a second search criteria. The second search criteria specifies a second custom author crowd. The processor also determines a first fluctuation of first content generated by the first custom author crowd and determines a second fluctuation of second content generated by the second custom author crowd. The processor also determines a fluctuation magnitude. The fluctuation magnitude indicates a difference between the first fluctuation to the second fluctuation.

A method comprising includes receiving, by a processor of a computing device, a first search criteria. The first search criteria specifies a first custom author crowd. The method also includes receiving a second search criteria. The second search criteria specifies a second custom author crowd. The method also includes determining a first fluctuation of first content generated by the first custom author crowd and determining a second fluctuation of second content generated by the second custom author crowd. The method also includes determining a fluctuation magnitude. The fluctuation magnitude indicates a difference between the first fluctuation to the second fluctuation.

A non-transitory computer readable medium having instructions stored thereon that, upon execution by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations. The operations include receiving a first search criteria. The first search criteria specifies a first custom author crowd. The operations also include receiving a second search criteria. The second search criteria specifies a second custom author crowd. The operations also include determining a first fluctuation of first content generated by the first custom author crowd and determining a second fluctuation of second content generated by the second custom author crowd. The operations also include determining a fluctuation magnitude. The fluctuation magnitude indicates a difference between the first fluctuation to the second fluctuation.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Illustrative embodiments will hereafter be described with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating computing devices and a server that may be used in accordance with an illustrative embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a flow diagram illustrating a method of determining fluctuations in a social media custom author group in accordance with an illustrative embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a flow diagram illustrating a method of monitoring a social media custom author group and sending an alert when fluctuations of author postings reach a predetermined threshold in accordance with an illustrative embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a flow diagram illustrating a method of comparing fluctuations in multiple social media custom author groupings in accordance with an illustrative embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a flow diagram illustrating a method of measuring effectiveness of an engagement and/or advertisement campaign based on the monitoring of a social media custom author grouping in accordance with an illustrative embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a flow diagram illustrating a method of defining, monitoring, and using a custom author grouping to run a marketing campaign in accordance with an illustrative embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Described herein are illustrative embodiments for methods and systems that provide for quantifying social audience activation through search and comparison of custom author groupings. In an illustrative embodiment, a user of the system may enter a search criteria that specifies a custom author crowd. The search criteria may specify various demographic information related to authors, posts created by authors, preferences of authors, temporal considerations (when did an author do something), or other various search criteria as disclosed herein. The user may also be able to enter multiple search criteria to specify, define, and/or search for a custom author crowd.

As disclosed herein, a user is generally referred to as a user of the disclosed system and methods, while an author is generally referred to as any user of social media. Whether the author actually “authors” posts is irrelevant to their categorization as an author. For example, an author as defined here may never actually author a post, but may interact on social media in other ways. In short, a distinction is made in the present application between a user of the disclosed system (the “user”) and a user of social media (an “author”). The terminology used throughout the present application is not meant to limit the activity of an author or user, or to prevent an author from also being a user or vice versa. Rather, the terminology is merely used to provide clarity and distinguish between users and authors. A user generally refers to a person using the systems and methods disclosed herein, while an author generally refers to a person using a website, social network, application software (apps), etc. (including applications for mobile phones, smart phones, tablets, personal data assistants (PDA's), laptops, desktop computers, etc. In other words, the system and methods disclosed herein may be used across one or more platforms and mediums including social networks, websites, mobile phone apps, and the like.

Once a crowd has been defined by a user, that crowd can be stored, analyzed, and/or tracked for various fluctuations within the crowd based on the authors in the crowd's behavior after the crowd has been defined. Many examples of fluctuations that may be determined by the system are disclosed herein, and are not meant to limit the possible fluctuations that may be tracked, analyzed, and/or determined. In one illustrative embodiment, a custom crowd may be initially defined by searching for authors who have authored a social media post within the past three months about any type of carbonated soft drink. Such a search may include search for different types and brands of carbonated soft drinks in social media posts. Whoever authored those posts would then be included in the custom author crowd.

A user of the system and methods disclosed herein may be different persons or entities. For example, a user may be an advertiser or agent/staffer of the advertiser who wishes to search for and create custom author crowds to track effectiveness of their advertising campaigns. In another example, the user may be a social network or agent/staffer of the social network who wishes to search for and create custom author crowds. A social network may wish to use custom author crowds for a variety of purposes. For example, the social network may wish to track their own advertising campaigns or advertising campaigns of those who use the social network to advertise. In the latter example, tracking others' advertising campaigns on the social network may allow the social network to better promote the effectiveness of advertising on their social network, and thereby increase advertisement spending on their social network. In another example, the social network (or an agent/staffer of the network) may perform searching for and tracking of custom author crowds on behalf of a separate advertising entity. In this situation, the advertiser may or may not dictate how the searching and tracking should be done by the social network. When the searching and tracking is not dictated by the advertiser, the social network may be offering the searching and tracking services as part of advertisement services paid for by the advertiser. In another example, the searching and tracking may be provided by the social network to advertisers. In this example, the advertiser may be the user of the system. Furthermore, a social network in this example may exert some control over how the searching and tracking is accomplished. For example, the social network may limit the number or type of authors the advertiser can search for. In another example, the social network may limit the number of custom author crowds the advertiser can search for or save for tracking. The social network could also limit the total number of authors searched for and or tracked by an advertiser. The social network could also limit the number of authors allowed in each custom author group tracked by the advertiser.

In other examples, the system and methods disclosed herein may operate across multiple mediums and platforms such as websites, social media networks, and/or mobile apps. For example, an advertiser may want to define a custom author crowd by performing searches of Facebook™ authors. The advertiser may also wish to find the same authors they already found on Facebook™ on another medium. Examples of other mediums may include a Dictionary.com™ mobile app, a user of ESPN™ Fantasy Football services, or individuals with an account on an online shopping website such as Amazon™. The advertiser may have a particular rationale for discovering or finding users on other mediums as well. For example, the advertiser may operate the mobile app Uber™, which offers taxi-like services. Uber™ may wish to identify authors that use a mobile app that allows tracking of city buses or other transportation related apps. In a further example, Uber™ may wish to identify authors that use any sort of road navigation app such as Google™ Maps. One possible implementation may be to market to those who use such navigation or transportation apps whenever there are a surplus of Uber™ drivers in a certain town or area. The system may even be able to identify when a particular app is actively being used. In this scenario, an author may be using a navigation app such as a city bus tracker app during a time when there is a surplus of Uber™ drivers. The system may identify the authors actively using the bus tracker app and market Uber™ to those authors. The identification could happen automatically and marketing may happen automatically as predefined by a user. In another embodiment, the identification of surplus drivers and potential market for those drivers may occur automatically and the marketing may be executed manually. In a third embodiment, all steps may be performed manually by a user. In these examples, an app developer may be able to open up their author database to a broader cross-platform activation system that may be tapped into by advertisers and other entities. The advertisers may target users on apps or platforms they do business on, or perform other relevant cross-platform marketing and targeting.

Next, a baseline magnitude may be determined using a fluctuation criteria. For example, within the custom author crowd, the fluctuation criteria may be set as root beer. In this embodiment, any author in the custom crowd that has authored a post about root beer in the past three months (that is, whoever has previously posted about root beer in the set amount of time before the custom crowd is created or specified) is a part of the baseline magnitude used to calculate a fluctuation. A group of users that are a part of the baseline magnitude may be considered to be a part of a community that enjoys root beer within the custom author crowd. Fluctuation criteria may also have the same parameters as the initial search criteria.

Once the custom author crowd has been specified and a baseline magnitude is determined using a fluctuation criteria, the system may monitor the custom author crowd in order to determine a fluctuation of the custom author crowd if authors in the custom author crowd author content or engage in a behavior that is related to the fluctuation criteria. For example, an author that previously had not posted about root beer or previously been considered part of a community that enjoys root beer may author an online social media posting regarding their experience trying root beer for the first time and enjoying it. The system may determine a fluctuation in the custom author crowd based on the online social media posting. That is, the community of those who enjoy root beer within the custom author crowd has fluctuated upward. In other embodiments, the system may determine a downward fluctuation. For example, an author may leave an affinity group for root beer hosted by a social media website, which may indicate a downward fluctuation and that the author has left the community of those who enjoy root beer. In another example, a system may determine that an author's failure to author content about root beer over a certain time period is a downward fluctuation and that the author has left the community of those that enjoy root beer. In an illustrative embodiment, the system is monitoring a plurality of authors in a custom author crowd for overall fluctuations based on a fluctuation criteria. That is, the system can determine how many authors in the custom author crowd have joined and/or left a community defined by the fluctuation criteria.

In an illustrative embodiment, multiple fluctuation criteria may be used with the same custom author crowd. In this example, a custom author crowd may be watched for fluctuations in multiple types of things. For example, a custom author crowd may be watched in regards to root beer as in the preceding example, and the custom author crowd may also be watched in regards to orange juice. In this example, the additional fluctuation criteria may also be used to establish a baseline community of those authors in the custom author crowd who have authored content indicating a positive emotion toward orange juice. Multiple fluctuation criteria used for the same custom author crowd may or may not be related to each other. In this example, the two fluctuation criteria are related to each other, as both of them are beverages. Similarly, in other embodiments, whenever there are multiple fluctuation criteria used, the multiple fluctuation criteria may be part of a common fluctuation criteria type (e.g. beverages, as in the previous example).

In another illustrative embodiment, a user may specify more than one custom author crowd. Multiple custom author crowds may have at least one different author from each other. In some examples, different custom author crowds may have one or more authors in common. In other examples, different custom author crowds may be mutually exclusive and not have any authors in common. Each of the custom author crowds can be monitored for fluctuations based on fluctuation criteria, similar to the examples disclosed herein. Where different custom author crowds are monitored based on the same fluctuation criteria, the system can determine a fluctuation for multiple custom author crowds based on that same fluctuation criteria. In an illustrative embodiment, the baseline determined using the fluctuation criteria, and the fluctuations determined for the custom author crowds, can be compared to each other. In this way, a difference in fluctuations, called a fluctuation magnitude difference, may be determined as between the multiple custom author crowds. Returning to the root beer example, the multiple custom author crowds may all be the target of an advertisement for root beer or may receive a promotional coupon for root beer. The custom author crowds may then be monitored to determine how, and when, the fluctuations of the custom author crowds change based on the advertisement or coupon. In some embodiments, one custom author crowd may have a different fluctuation than another custom author crowd. The resulting fluctuation magnitude difference in the crowds may indicate to a user the relative effectiveness of the advertisement or coupon on a particular custom author crowd.

In addition to comparing multiple custom author crowds to each other to track performance and return on investment for advertising and other author engagement, a custom author crowd may also be compared to a pre-defined or curated social community, following, or fan base. In other words, a custom author crowd may be compared to another crowd that serves as a baseline or other reference point for the custom author crowd. A pre-defined or curated social community may be all the authors on a social media web site or may be all the authors the system has access to. A pre-defined or curated social community may also consist of a list of current paying customers or former customers, followers or fan bases of the user's social media accounts at a given point in time, followers or fan bases of specific competitors' social media accounts or other stakeholders' social media accounts, pre-existing whitelists of authors who have or are thought to have certain characteristics, influencer lists, custom audiences that may have been generated, procured, targeted, or otherwise leveraged in other marketing or advertising campaigns, or any other applicable user listing. Another pre-defined or curated social community may be determined similar to a custom crowd (by searching based on demographics, posts, etc.) but may be saved in the system perpetually and thus is characterized as a baseline pre-defined social community.

Advantageously, the system provides the ability to effectively interrelate paid audiences (the targets of advertising/paid/sponsored content) and owned audiences (those authors who already follow a company/product/brand account such as a Twitter™ account and are members of the company/product/brand's community). To this end, the system can show after an advertising campaign that more of the authors in a targeted crowd have joined the following (by following the company/product/brand Twitter™ account, for example). This can be referred to as a crowd penetration metric. One by one the system can show authors in a custom author crowd being captured. Advantageously, when an author follows a brand's Twitter™ account, the author is more likely to see unsponsored content posted on the brand's account. This is helpful because the unsponsored content is essentially free to post. Thus, by keeping track of how many authors the brand has captured, it can also keep track of the relative effectiveness of their unsponsored content as well.

In other illustrative embodiments, multiple custom author crowds may be monitored for various and different fluctuation criteria as desired by a user. For example, a user may designate one fluctuation criteria as Brand A Root Beer and may designate a second fluctuation criteria as Brand B Root Beer. Both fluctuation criteria may be applied to the same custom author crowd. Accordingly, the custom author crowd may be monitored to determine not only how the custom author crowd is fluctuating in its sentiments toward Brand A Root Beer, but also how the custom author crowd's sentiment is fluctuating with regard to Brand B Root Beer. This may be useful if Brand A Root Beer and Brand B Root Beer are competitors for the same customers. Similarly, the multiple fluctuation criteria (Brand A and Brand B) may be applied to multiple custom author crowds. Multiple custom author crowds may be selected on the basis of demographics, behavioral tendencies, lifestyle indicators, or other specific market segmentation criteria, thus allowing a user to monitor and compare how fluctuations regarding Brand A and Brand B root beers are changing in particular demographic groups or target market segments.

In an illustrative embodiment, the search criteria that specifies a custom author crowd may include multiple criteria of varying types. For example, the search criteria may include authors in the custom author crowd who have authored a social media post about cheese and who live in the state of Wisconsin. In another example, the search criteria may include authors in the custom author crowd who have liked a particular celebrity (or joined an affinity group for a particular celebrity), such as Harry Houdini, and authored a social media post about magic within the last 6 months. In another example, the search criteria may include authors in the custom author crowd who have purchased tea online in the last year and live in or around Boston, Mass. In another example, the search criteria may include authors in the custom author crowd who have authored a post on social media about their cell phone provider and who have authored a post on social media about their subscription to pay television within the last year.

In an illustrative embodiment, multiple custom author crowds may be specified and stored utilizing systems and methods disclosed herein. In this embodiment, two different custom author crowds may include common authors. In one embodiment, no action is taken by the system with regards to the common authors. That is, the common authors are left in both custom author crowds. In an alternative embodiment, the system automatically identifies that the two custom author crowds both include at least one common author. In one embodiment, the system may present a user with a choice to remove the common author from one of the custom author crowds. In another embodiment, the system may automatically remove the common author from one of the custom author crowds. For example, the system may automatically remove the common author from the larger of the two custom author crowds. In another example, the system may automatically remove the common author from the custom author crowd that was specified later in time as opposed to the first custom author crowd. In another example, the system may automatically detect when an author in one custom crowd joins another custom author crowd specified by the user. This may include custom author crowds defined by the parameters described herein, a specific social fan base, etc. It should also be noted that the ability of the system to detect the presence or absence of an author or authors in one or more crowds may not be limited to one social networking site. In one example, the system may automatically detect when an author joins or leaves a crowd on social networking site A and social networking site B. This may help aid the user in making a determination that it may be more effective to target this author or group of authors with different messages on different social platforms.

When determining a fluctuation within a custom author crowd, various methods and systems may be used. In an illustrative embodiment, content generated by the authors that causes the system to measure a fluctuation may include a status update. For example, an author may post a status update on a social networking site. The status update may include text, image, audio file, video, symbols, and/or universal resource identifiers (URIs) that comprise a fluctuation criteria. That is, the author's status update may include text or a URI the system is looking for to measure a fluctuation. In another embodiment, the fluctuation criteria monitored for and measured may be an online purchase of a good or service. Another fluctuation criteria may be signing up for an account with a web site or web service. Another fluctuation criteria may be selecting a URI, or selecting a URI sent to an author through a messaging service or e-mail. Another fluctuation criteria may be viewing a particular webpage, or viewing a particular webpage for a certain amount of time. Another fluctuation criteria may be authoring a social media post or posts including a particular text, image, video, audio file, symbol, or URI more than once, or any other predetermined number of times. Another fluctuation criteria may be authoring multiple social media posts that contain a particular text or URI that are related. For example, the fluctuation criteria may cause the system to monitor for and measure a number of authors who post about peanut butter and jelly. Another fluctuation criteria may be joining a particular affinity group or liking a particular fan page for an item, brand, celebrity, sports team, interest, etc. Other potential fluctuation criteria may include following another author, retweeting and/or sharing a post from another author, liking an author, commenting on the posts of other authors, or interacting with another author who is also a member of the same custom author crowd. Fluctuation criteria could also be an interaction with a posted or promoted post authored by the user of the system. In other words, if an advertiser posts sponsored content, the fluctuation criteria may be designed to measure how a custom author crowd interacts with and based on that sponsored content. This can help inform or alert the user to authors' subsequent activity to a user action or interaction. Another fluctuation criteria may involve images or characteristics of images (including image sequences such as videos) such as a certain image, style of an image, item or product in the image, text or signs in an image or appended to an image, person in the image, number of people in the image, age of people in the image, geographic locations of where the image was captured, lighting levels of the image, whether the image was indoor or outdoor, time an image was originally captured, food in an image, resolution of an image, style of an image (i.e., selfie, landscape, panoramic, portrait, square, filter type, video or still, etc.), duration of an image sequence or video, duration of a particular individual or object's presence in an image sequence or video, text or hyperlinks that appear in a video or are appended to a video, or any other characteristic of an image, image sequence, or content of an image. In using such fluctuation criteria for an image, the system may utilize photo analysis software such as facial recognition, image recognition, metadata reading or other analysis on images that are searched. These and other related fluctuation criteria may also be applied to video content and/or other rich media. Other fluctuation criteria could also take into account the user's activity over a certain time period with respect to desired fluctuation criteria in the custom author crowd. In other words, the system may enable the user to determine the total behaviors, postings or promoted messages that were directed to each custom author crowd as a proportion of the user's total outreach efforts, and the resulting viewership and interactions made by authors with that user's content as a proportion of the total interactions made by the custom author crowd during a specific time period. These fluctuation criteria may provide signals related to the efficiency of the user's messages and strategy to reach and engage each custom author crowd, as well as signals related the “mindshare” or brand awareness the user possesses within a custom author crowd.

In an illustrative embodiment, the system may be configured to send out alerts based on the tracked fluctuations of custom author groups. For example, if a fluctuation meets a certain magnitude, an alert may be sent to a user. In just one example, 10% of a custom author group may meet the fluctuation criteria and an alert may be sent. The 10% that meet the fluctuation criteria may be a total of the custom author group, or may be an additional 10% beyond those in the custom author group that had already met the fluctuation criteria (in other words were already a part of the community) when the custom author group was created. Additional alerts may be subsequently sent out when other predetermined thresholds are met. Thresholds may be other varying numbers than the example 10%. Additionally, discrete numbers may be used instead of percentages. For example, alerts may be sent out for every 1,000 authors who meet the fluctuation criteria. Aggregations of these alerts and other real-time performance measures may be viewable to the user in the system.

In another illustrative embodiment, alerts may also be sent out based on fluctuation magnitude differences between multiple custom author groups. For example, the system may encourage a race between multiple custom author groups to meet fluctuation criteria. For example, a user may define two custom author groups that have different authors. The two custom author groups may be assigned to different marketing teams to target. The same fluctuation criteria may be measured for each of the custom author groups. In this way, the marketing teams could compete at getting their respective custom author groups to meet the fluctuation criteria. Alerts may be sent when custom author groups hit certain predetermined thresholds of meeting fluctuation criteria similar to the embodiments described above. In another embodiment, alerts may be sent out when one custom author group surpasses another custom author group in number of authors that meet the fluctuation criteria. In this way, the marketing teams or other users would know who is in the lead for marketing success and would know in real time when they had surpassed another group. Advantageously, this may incentivize marketers or other users to do a better job when reaching out to, engaging, and marketing to the various authors in the custom author groups.

In another illustrative embodiment, alerts may be sent out regarding negative fluctuations. For example, if, in a custom author crowd, a predetermined number of authors disassociate themselves with an affinity group, an alert may be sent to a user to indicate a negative fluctuation. Similarly, in another example, the system may sense negative language toward a product, person, etc. in a post authored by someone in the custom author crowd. These alerts may be triggered by activities of a custom author crowd that take place on multiple social networking sites, websites, or apps.

In another illustrative embodiment, alerts may be sent out based on temporal factors. For example, an alert on the progress of fluctuation criteria for a custom author crowd may be sent out every two weeks, regardless of whether any predetermined threshold is met. In another embodiment, an alert may be sent out if a predetermined threshold for fluctuation is met within a certain time period. For example, if the fluctuation of a custom author crowd based on a particular fluctuation criteria reaches 3% in one month, an alert may be sent out.

In another illustrative embodiment, the system may be configured to alert the user when certain thresholds are met in relation to his or her own outreach efforts that may or may not be directed at specific custom author crowds. For example, the user may want to know when he has attained 10% mindshare within a specific custom author crowd or when he has achieved 95% awareness in a custom author crowd. In other example, the user may want to know when his organic marketing program is at peak efficiency whereby the timing and frequency of his postings elicits the best response rate or desired fluctuation criteria within a custom author crowd.

In another illustrative embodiment, the system may be configured to alert the user when an author of particular importance engages in certain online activities or authors a post with certain words, images, videos, audio files, symbols, and/or URIs. For example, a user may want to know if a famous celebrity authors a post about a user's product. In one specific example, an under the weather President of the United States may tweet positively about the efficacy of a particular brand of facial tissue. The brand manager of that particular brand of facial tissue may wish to be alerted that such a high profile individual is evacuating his or her nasal cavities upon their particular brand of paper handkerchiefs. The system can alert the brand manager thusly. The brand manager may then choose to promote such a post using the system or take other action based on the alert stemming from the President's now famous nasal mucus.

Alerts and other monitoring of fluctuation criteria may also be done in real-time or near real-time. This would allow users to immediately know when thresholds for fluctuation criteria are met. In other terminology, a user may immediately be notified when a certain number of authors from social media sites have been activated or join a community based on their authored posts or other online actions. Advantageously, alerts and other real time notifications may trigger increased advertisement spending overall, as advertisers are able to better capitalize on trends and current states of engagement from authors. It may even be the case that entire marketing or advertising programs are based off of notification to these fluctuation criteria.

In another illustrative embodiment, the fluctuation criteria may be used to track performance or success of a rival. For example, if someone sells a particular type of electric car, they may wish to know how many of their targeted custom author grouping is interested in other brands of electric cars or even gasoline cars. Accordingly, a user may set fluctuation criteria related to a competitor product as well as their own. In another embodiment, the seller of electric cars may set a fluctuation criteria to monitor and track authors in the custom author group who author or engage with content relating to all cars. In this way, the seller may be able to determine a proportion of those authoring content about cars generally that are interested in electric cars, or are interested particularly in the seller's type of electric cars. In this way, users may determine subsets of custom author crowds. Advantageously, the subsets can be dynamic, as they can be set to track the fluctuations of the custom author crowd in any of the ways disclosed herein. In another illustrative embodiment, this subset can be treated as a separate custom author crowd. In other words, the definition of a custom author crowd may be analogous to a fluctuation criteria. In this way, a custom author crowd may only include, for example, any author that has posted something about a car within the last year. If an author originally is considered part of the custom author crowd, but a year goes by without that author having again posted something about a car, that author may be removed from the custom author crowd.

In another illustrative embodiment, the fluctuation criteria and activation of users in a custom author crowd can be used to trigger the publication or use of content such as advertising. For example, the system may automatically post an advertisement that is viewable to the custom author crowd when that custom author crowd reaches a particular fluctuation criteria. In just one specific example, when at least 15% percent of authors in a custom author crowd have authored a post on social media about football, the system may automatically publish an online advertisement to that custom author crowd for a paid television subscription service that offers football programming. In another embodiment, the 15% threshold being met in the custom author crowd may also trigger advertisements for other custom author crowds about football programming, or may trigger advertisements for all authors about football programming. In another illustrative embodiment, the automatically published advertisement may only be published for the authors who have authored a post about football. The automatically published advertisements may come in many various forms. The advertisements may be through sponsored content on a news or pseudo-news website, may be native ads or editorial content on a social networking site or other web property, may be a standard banner advertisement, may be recommended and sponsored content on a shopping website, may be an e-mail, may be a paper mail advertisement, may be a sponsored video, may be a video featuring a product (product placement or subliminal advertising), or any other type of advertising. In another embodiment, the promoted content may be a post of one of the authors. For example, if an author posts a favorable comment about the aforementioned paid television subscription service that offers football programming, that post may be promoted. Promoting such a post may involve prioritizing the post for other social media users and authors so that it is seen more often than another post.

In another embodiment, the system may not execute the paid advertisement or unsponsored posting on the user's behalf. Instead, when the fluctuation criteria are met the system may signal an opportunity or recommend that the user engage in a certain behavior or publish content to capitalize on the favorable conditions within the custom author crowd. In such an example, execution of these actions may be facilitated by sending the fluctuation criteria and other data from the disclosed system into another software application or set of software applications via a customizable application program interface (API). Examples of integrated software applications may include but are not intended to be limited to a social media management system, a social media publishing or engagement platform, a programmatic advertising platform, a real-time bidding (RTB) platform, a demand side platform (DSP), a supply side platform (SSP), an advertising exchange, a content management system, a community platform, a marketing automation system, or any other data management, analysis and optimization, web, Internet, or marketing technology platform. In other words, the system disclosed herein may be an enabler of other functions. For example, the execution of advertising and marketing campaigns may not be done directly via the present system. That is, it may be the case that this system leverages an API that plugs into well-established social media management systems like HootSuite™ that offer post scheduling and publishing functionality. The system may also send data into programmatic ad platforms. In another example, the user could be presented with an example post or a pre-written post to publish based on the opportunity. In yet another example, the user could author their own post or advertisement based on the opportunity. In another embodiment, the user may be able to start a process to publish a post or advertisement, but the post or advertisement may have to be approved by another party before it is posted. For example, if the user is a marketing agency, the agency's client may approve the post or advertisement. In another example, the post or advertisement may be approved by the social networking website where the post or advertisement will be published.

In another embodiment, the system may be utilized by users to support forecasting activities. That is, the activation history of one or more crowds with the system may be leveraged in conjunction with planning exercises of the user and/or to help predict when certain crowds or crowd members will engage in certain behaviors or post certain types of content on a particular medium. Such trend data and other variability measures may be helpful when planning campaigns that may span multiple online platforms, or even promote offline sales. In an illustrative embodiment, the user may want to know how many authors have been activated about root beer in Milwaukee, and the rate at which this fluctuation criteria was met over the last year. The user may then leverage this data and other measurements to predict how many authors may be activated at a later time to plan his or her advertisement or engagement campaigns accordingly. In another example, if the fluctuation criteria deals with new product availability in-store, the user may leverage this data to inform demand planning and the stocking of merchandise at retail stores within the most activated geographic regions. In that way, crowd activity may help optimize inventory levels and allow the user to better react to shifts in product or service demand.

Advantageously, the systems and methods disclosed herein allow social networks, websites, owners and operators of application software (apps), and other content publishers to monetize their user bases and monetize their user bases more effectively. In other words, the system and method disclosed herein allows a social network to easily track how advertisement and other targeted content or actions are affecting their user base. Armed with the quantifiable and objective information of how well targeted content and advertising is received and reacted to by a social network user base, a social network can charge higher prices to advertisers that utilize the social network for advertising or promoting content. A social network may also be able to charge higher prices to advertising customers based on the set of crowd attributes specified by the user or by the number of concurrent custom author crowds that are searched, targeted and tracked by the user. The customization of the systems and methods disclosed herein also offers a significant advantage. The system creates the opportunity for the social network to create a new economy around their inventory, i.e. their authors, where the network may define new ways in which to bid up the most sought-after or niche prospective crowds. It can be an exchange where the economy is based on expression and action, and it may cost advertisers more to reach the best authors or crowd segments in the highest demand.

Advantageously, the system functionality described herein may help social networks and other content publishers surface important new paid and organic marketing opportunities for their advertisers, as well as valuable remarketing opportunities for advertisers to target the same crowd again with a new message at a certain time. Furthermore, another advantage of this system may be the improvement of the social networks' own user experience through better native advertising and more relevant ads. The provision of these and other benefits may help attract new advertisers or retain existing advertisers. The system may also increase the size and frequency of ad buys, and incentivize the perpetuation of spend among current advertising customers. Performance metrics that may be generated by the system related to the activities of a custom author crowd and the user may provide deeper context around campaign engagement. Such insights, that may be both qualitative and quantitative in nature, may enrich the return on investment that a social network is capable of demonstrating to a prospective advertiser and thusly differentiate that social network's ad products from those of other social networks. That is, a social network using the system and methods described herein may be at an advantage in securing greater advertising spend or “share of wallet” due to the richness and effectiveness of the advertising experience provided.

Advantageously, the system may also interrelate success within the curated social communities and target custom author crowds of the user. In other words, the system may be able to drive and illustrate valuable social media community growth for the advertisers showing that he or she is capturing the attention and hearts of more of the users he cares about through various programs and initiatives. This advantage also applies to other user lists described elsewhere in the present application that may include current customers, competitors' fan bases, influencers, etc.

Another advantage of the system and method disclosed herein can be exploited by brands and brand managers, as well as by their advertising agencies. Similar to how social networks may exploit the systems and methods disclosed herein, brand managers and other marketers may be able to cause maintained or increased spending in advertisements with the objective and quantifiable information that can be provided by the system and methods disclosed herein. This advantage is important because other forms of tracking the effectiveness of advertising (such as counting the number of clicks a banner advertisement on a web page gets) may not as accurately reflect the effectiveness of advertising. For example, robots may represent some of the clicks on a banner advertisement or other promoted content and may not accurately reflect the number of human users that select an advertisement. Furthermore, a human user may accidentally click a banner advertisement and may never be truly interested in the advertisement. The present system and method adds more contextual information and gives quantifiable gains and returns for social media advertising.

Another advantage of the systems and methods disclosed herein is that the systems and methods may be applied across multiple social networks and platforms. That is, authors may be linked across multiple social networking web sites and platforms, so that any post they author or association they make can be attached or linked to that particular author. The system may compile data and authors from multiple websites or other data sources. The system may automatically associate accounts or authors from different social media sites with each other by matching characteristics of the authors or accounts, such as an e-mail or phone number. Other information may also be acquired that can be used by the system to link multiple accounts from different social networking sites together as one author in the presently disclosed system. In another embodiment, some accounts on some social networking web sites may not be easily linked to accounts on another social networking site, and those accounts may be treated as different authors. It may even be the case that a particular custom author crowd consists of entirely different authors or is simply treated as a separate population of unique authors on two or more social networks. That is, an inquiry into multi-platform crowd membership may or may not be executed by the user. Such a system may also help advertisers and brand managers make informed decisions about social networks that are more effective and cost effective as compared to other social networks. For example, an advertiser may focus an advertising campaign on social network A and social network B. The results of the system and methods disclosed herein may identify that social network B showed a greater return by measuring the fluctuation criteria for the custom author crowds in social network A and social network B. Further, advertisers may be able to learn that advertising on one social network may be measured and effected through a second social network. For example, an advertiser may sponsor an article on a social news website, and authors may tweet about the article separately. The present system allows an advertiser to capture both how many people read the article on the social news website and how many authors tweeted about the article on a separate social news web site.

Advantageously, the system and methods disclosed herein allow a user to ensure that the audiences they are reaching are the audiences actually targeted by the advertising. This is important because some metrics for achieving engagement and advertising success may not accurately reflect whether a target market is being reached. For example, a web page may get 1,000 new likes in a month, but if 200 of those likes are from authors who do not reside in a country where the user does business, those 200 likes are not particularly useful or helpful to the user.

The present system and methods may also allow a user to more effectively benchmark and determine the total number of their target authors for a given promotion that exist on an advertising medium relative to a defined control group or the total population of authors. That is, an advertiser may more easily gauge their position relative to a denominator, or average score, and whether they are indeed capturing greater shares of the total available pie. The advertiser may also determine a relevant range, and scale, on which to assess their performance. Advertisers have increased visibility into how effective their efforts are in each segment of authors they are targeting over time on social media. Advertising effectiveness is achievable in a context-sensitive, quantifiable way that provides market share-like performance indicators on social media.

The system and methods disclosed herein also advantageously exploit people's natural desires for competition, achievement, and closure. By allowing users to see real-time or near real-time results and return on ad spending and quantifying those results, users may feel a better sense of accomplishment, and the feedback of return on investment may encourage even more aggressive marketing and ad spending.

In an illustrative embodiment, the system and methods disclosed herein may include a software platform that provides flexible and continuous search, refinement, and tracking of target user segments for the purpose of improving advertising effectiveness and providing a gamified advertising experience on a given digital or social medium. The system and methods may provide utility regardless of the advertiser's firm size or familiarity with social media, digital and social media advertising, best practices in ad targeting, and other web or social media-related technologies.

In an illustrative embodiment, a user can custom-define target segments or crowds of Internet authors on any given digital or social medium. That is, the user may perform digital or social market segmentation by identifying customized groupings of authors that represent a desired target market segment. Search result groupings and sizes are returned according to the user's custom search and targeting criteria made via a search interface.

In another illustrative embodiment, a user can store and refine conceptualizations of these custom-defined and generated author groupings on a dashboard. These crowds can be managed, edited, and constantly updated according to data from the ongoing, or past, activities of the authors contained within these specifically-defined segments (profile information, follower characteristics, text expressions, other web and social behaviors, etc), as well as from other manual actions executed by the software user.

In another illustrative embodiment, a user can engage in a gamified setting when monitoring and benchmarking all activities concerning a targeted crowd of social media authors. Advertisers will gain more contextually relevant information about author engagements with their ads and other content, and be alerted of any other desired actions made by authors within their custom-defined crowds. As such, the advertiser will be able to gauge how he or she is performing in a crowd relative to others (given his or her current level of investment and activity) and have continuous visibility into the degree of success in capturing greater shares of the entire available pie within the frame of specific advertising goals or key performance indicators.

In an illustrative embodiment, the system and methods provide a search tool and interface for returning groupings of similar authors on electronic media based on user-defined criteria in a custom search query. These custom-defined and retrieved groupings of authors constitute a unique target market segment or crowd, which is specified by the user of the system. A user may make a custom search query—through either free-form text in a search bar or by selecting from available check boxes—and look for unique objects and characteristics contained within author records on any participating advertising medium, e.g. a social networking platform. Upon entering a custom search query, the system can return results of groupings of similar authors. In other words, the system may not return a list of every single author that meets the custom search query criteria. Instead, the system may return groups of authors that are similar. For example, a user may search for authors that have authored posts about baseball in the last two months. The system may return groupings of similar authors. In another example, the system may display and return groupings of authors based on a particular baseball team mentioned by the authors. The system may display that 300 authors mentioned Team A, 400 authors mentioned Team B, 200 authors mentioned Team C, etc. In other words, the user may specify a certain market or industry, and have the search results be grouped according to different brands within that industry. How the authors are grouped may be specified by the user. That is, the groupings may be custom defined. In another example, the groupings may be based on what social network the author is a part of. Using the previous example, the system would therefore return results showing, for example, that 700 authors on Facebook™ have posted about baseball in the last two months, 900 authors on Twitter™ posted about baseball in the last two months, 300 authors posted on Instagram™ about baseball in the last two months, etc. Other ways the authors may be grouped is how recently they posted about the selected custom search query. For example, in the baseball example, authors may be grouped together as those who have posted about baseball within the last day, the last week, the last month, and the last two months. In another example, the authors may be grouped by the frequency with which they meet the selected custom search query. For example, authors may be grouped together who have posted about baseball in the last two months once, 2-3 times, 4-5 times, and 6 or more times.

The system can then match all of the authors in the database of that particular medium (or collection of media) who possess the specified criteria and return these results to the user. The retrieved list of authors from search will be “tagged” as members of a population of interest, which collectively represents a crowd the user wants to target. Targeting criteria may include keywords selection, image and video shares, demographic and psychographic attributes such as age, gender, geography and interests, or other behaviors and actions, historical activity, mobile device, and other metadata indexed during a specific time period that will allow for the grouping of similar authors. The system can also work within the constraints of pre-defined targeting criteria offered and controlled by an advertising medium whereby the process of searching and grouping authors to be served an advertisement is executed solely by the advertising medium. That is, the system may be used in more of a customizable, self-service fashion by the advertiser or be implemented by the owner of the advertising medium. As an example, the system may be provided to an advertiser who can perform searching and analysis of custom author groups, or the system can be used by a social network to demonstrate the effectiveness of the advertisements on their network. In other words, the system can be used by advertisers, on behalf of advertisers, or as marketing to advertisers.

For example, a digital marketer for a department store may want to find all authors on Twitter™ who have mentioned Beyonce Knowles and that department store in the past year, like music, and used shopping-related keywords after December 1st. The advertiser may call this segment, “Beyonce Holiday Shoppers.” The logic in performing this search is that this population might be interested in an offer for Beyonce's new gift set that month. The user enters this search query just like in any other engine, for fast results on segment size and the collection of anonymized or non-anonymized authors who match the search criteria. For the purpose of this user's query, the retrieved author grouping represents the total possible market for the campaign. It provides a quantifiable denominator for determining baselines and benchmarks, and for calculating percentage changes and other measurements over time. This is especially useful if the advertiser wishes to send another promoted or unsponsored offer at a later time to this exact same population of authors, or to see if they organically take some specified action of interest absent any stimulus from the user. In this way, the system allows the advertiser to group authors in similar contexts and view them in custom categories or crowds that are meaningful to any given marketing or advertising program. This new crowd can then represent the target audience to which the advertiser may direct a promoted ad or even unsponsored content via e.g. a social networking site. Although this crowd was produced by specific search criteria at a fixed point in time, the social activities of authors contained within this crowd will change, and new data on their activities will accumulate as time goes on.

The system also provides for visualizing search results in discrete groupings based on similarities of contained records. In addition, these author groupings will be visualized and labeled with characteristics, as opposed to returning a list of individual line item results like a traditional search engine would produce. In this way, a user will not be overwhelmed by the results of numerous individual author records. Furthermore, a third party action may not affect the ranking or relevance of search results presented to the user. Existence in a grouping is determined solely by the presence or absence of searched attributes in author records, which is determined by author activity and characteristics, and available metadata in the author database.

The aforementioned search and segmentation process can take place on a purely anonymous or personally identifiable basis, or any combination thereof, in accordance with accepted privacy regulations and standards, privacy measures taken by individual users, and the policies of websites, social networking platforms, and other advertising media who possess the user data.

Query results from a search for authors can be saved for reference and subsequent analysis. Author lists produced from a custom search query can be transferred onto what will be referred to as a whitelist for the purpose of ongoing measurement and later action. In essence, storing and monitoring of custom search results (which happen to be social media authors) can be directly paired with the search functionality.

In searching and archiving the author search results, the system effectively can return a digitized representation of a total crowd. It allows the user to perform accurate segment sizing and to define and better understand a crowd that he or she is uniquely interested in at a given time. Author records contained within the author database that match the user's search parameters can each have unique identifiers, which enable the demarcation and aggregation processes to work easily when subsequently using the whitelist and/or custom author grouping. Furthermore, this may allow an author to be part of a custom author grouping by merely associating or storing the unique identifier in a custom author grouping. This allows a custom author grouping to contain unique identifiers instead of all information relating to an author. When searching for authors, the system may have no results or database or populated list of authors at all stored before the search. Once search parameters are entered, the system searches the internet or various databases (such as a social media database) for the authors and populates the search results.

Since an advertiser's targeted crowds are dynamic in nature, the user of the system disclosed herein may want to have searches and groupings for crowds—these author search results—archived and available to reference at a later time. The system allows the user to create his or her own personal query-specific “index” of author groupings that can be extracted from the results of the search. That is, the system provides the user with the option to populate one or more custom crowds with the results of a search query. The capability allows a user to store, archive, refine and manually adjust results returned by his or her custom search query. This conceptualization of a crowd of target authors can be viewed and edited in its original form at any time.

For example, a corporate communications professional at a large retail store may want to search for and identify the crowd on Twitter™ who is currently talking about the retailer's recent credit card breach. These authors may be a high priority for the retailer to reach with an apologetic message immediately following the incident. However, six months later, the user may want to follow up and send these exact same authors a different message: perhaps an exclusive, early-bird offer to a brand new clothing line for the purpose of re-engaging these potentially unhappy consumers. That is, the system may be utilized for remarketing campaigns to specific user groupings.

In this way, the ability to tag and store crowds will allow the advertiser to gain greater context into the behavior of the crowd he or she wishes to curate and nurture over time—whether it is tracking responsiveness to a promotion or any other author behavior. These crowds, in turn, can be constantly refreshed and updated as new authors join Twitter™ or any other social networking site, talk about a topic of interest, are served advertisements, etc. What's more, the advertiser can make comparisons and gauge performance measures exclusive to his or her specifically selected crowds—rather than on the marketing channel spend holistically. With this system, the advertiser can view performance measures on specific crowds, specific campaigns, and the channels they are on.

A user of the systems and methods disclosed herein can also append an aforementioned crowd with proprietary data or third-party audience data related to the target author base that is not produced by the system. For example, a user could upload customer relationship management (CRM) data on individual authors, which may consist of e.g. Twitter™ IDs or other unique author identifiers accumulated from other marketing programs. This capability provides the user with flexibility to add, change, or supplement author records that share similar characteristics with the crowd produced by system and methods disclosed herein.

A crowd may not be subject to any change to a search engine-indexing algorithm, availability of metadata, or by third party activity, which would consequently affect the organic ranking and presence or absence of individual search result listings. Systems and methods disclosed herein may also not be limited by the type of item or items returned on a search engine results page: these may include pages, documents, descriptions, links, usernames, and any other unique records matching the user's search query, which may be useful to archive and reference in original form at a later time.

Such a system and method as disclosed herein may be used for activating or activated crowd members. Returning to the “Beyonce Holiday Shoppers” example from above, some of the crowd members may view an article about a bizarre scandal with the pop star and take to Twitter™ with their commentary. The author postings are not responding to content from the user, but are nonetheless activated to the topic of Beyonce Knowles. So, in this way, any data on reach (impressions), behavioral engagement (likes, retweets, shares, follows and unfollows, photo uploads etc.), text expressions, image or video content shares, and even sentiment data on those mentions (positive, negative or neutrality of posts) can all fuel for social activation metrics. In various embodiments, authors may be activated by either online or offline stimuli. These metrics can indicate a good time to market certain products, services, content, etc.

Metrics actually measured by the system with regards to its crowds can be varied and may be calculated in different ways. Although not a comprehensive list of possible metrics, some example measurements include: (1) crowd to community ratio: size of the crowd vs. size of current follower base; (2) crowd penetration: percentage of crowd members contained in a specific social community or following (this can also be similarly tracked as a “crowd to community conversion rate” or a “crowd acquisition rate”); (3) crowd conversion rate: % of crowd members that opt into a marketing offer/total number of crowd members who saw the offer; (4) crowd activation rate: # of crowd members that take action of interest/total crowd size (this can also be tracked as the “activated” community for something within a crowd); (5) crowd engagement: # of crowd members engaging with paid or organic content/total overall engagement (this can also be tracked in raw numbers); (6) crowd impressions: # of crowd members to whom paid or organic content was displayed/total overall impressions (this can also be tracked in raw numbers); (7) percentage change in crowd size: (# of crowd members at time 1−# of crowd members at time 0)/# of crowd members at time 0; (8) multi-crowd membership: method for finding duplicate records by matching unique author identifiers contained within multiple custom author crowds; (9) crowd awareness: percentage of crowd members who are likely to be aware of a brand, product, or service based on the activities and postings of these authors during a certain time period. Measurements and metrics specific to one crowd may be compared to total measures that may include actions taken by authors who are not represented in the crowd; (10) crowd fatigue: calculated by determining the number and frequency of advertisements delivered to a singular crowd during a specific time period relative to other crowds (this measurement may also be expressed in percentage or proportional terms); (11) crowd attraction: percentage of total online activity and interactions of the authors within a custom author crowd that concerns or is directed to other members of the custom author crowd or related to the defined characteristics of the crowd—this may be considered a measurement of the degree of attraction within a custom author crowd on a social platform relative to other crowds (this may also be expressed as an evaluation of inter-crowd communicativeness); (12) crowd focus: percentage of behaviors, postings, or promoted messages by the user that were directed to each custom author crowd based on the user's total online activity (this may also be expressed in relation to the user's other custom author crowds).

A user may also use the crowd as a basis for gaining other statistics specific to his target audience, including: other embodiments of awareness measurement, advertising fatigue or other embodiments of reach and frequency capping within a crowd, content relevance, affinity strength and comparisons, word-of-mouth marketing gauges, advocacy and loyalty indicators, or any range of behaviors and expressions—even sharing activity of different media files by these authors. The system may also facilitate event-based alerting and quantifiable aggregations of activities in a custom crowd. For example, when an author uses a specific keyword or hashtag in a tweet, the user of the system may be alerted. He may also be alerted to and may be capable of viewing the total number of such instances that occurred with respect to his crowd over a certain time period. The user of the system could specify these specific events of interest when setting up a custom search monitor.

Advantageously, the system allows for ongoing measurement of a specified crowd as expressed in terms of the share of total authors that exist in that crowd. The user experience with the system may create the feeling of a challenge for the user: it is theoretically feasible to capture one's entire target segment and to verify those successes through various data points, quantitatively. That is, there are a total quantifiable number of target authors, which can be compared against benchmarks and current activity levels. Each step closer to the total may be treated as a minor victory in itself. To accomplish this, the system may include a user interface or dashboard-like visualization to display the various crowds, calculations, comparisons, current user performance, benchmarks, comparison to benchmarks, past user performance, competitor performance, user activity levels, user investment or advertisement spending, and/or comparison to other investment levels by competitors or industry averages.

An illustrative embodiment may also include notification of action or actions taken by an author contained within a custom-curated crowd that signals fluctuations of interest in the overall performance of that crowd. The addition of gamification techniques to this software platform allows for the creation of thresholds through performance metrics that can provide an advertiser with a sense of achievement and closure—even addiction—with respect to his or her current level of author activity relative to known baselines, benchmarks, and short and long-term goals.

After creating one or more crowds, a user may choose to proactively target authors by engaging in any variety of direct marketing activities or by leveraging specific ad products offered by the advertising medium. The user may also choose to passively view the organic activity of authors in those segments. In either approach, the system allows the user to monitor subsequent author activity within his or her crowd after the crowd was created.

The system also provides a customizable keyword and behavior-based alerting and aggregate measuring mechanism to the user when any of the authors included in a custom-defined crowd executes an action or behavior of interest on any range of digital or social media. That is, only the activity of the authors specifically contained within a user's crowd will trigger an alert and impact overall performance measurement. The system provides a huge range of possibilities regarding the behaviors that an advertiser may be interested to track and aggregate within a crowd and/or to receive a direct notification. For example, an author could mention a specific news event or brand name, engage with a piece of unsponsored content such as a Facebook™ message, visit a website, click on a paid advertisement, follow a corporate Twitter™ handle, or engage in any other behavior on a digital or social medium specified as an action of interest by the user. Recall a previous example: a user may want to know when his or her custom-defined crowd of “Beyonce Holiday Shoppers” takes an action. In an example apart from engagement with paid advertisements, the user may want to know when a crowd member elects to follow a certain Twitter™ account. That is, the user is interested in each instance an author contained within this particular crowd takes this singular action. In this case, the system will determine the baseline number of users within the custom-defined crowd who follow the Twitter™ handle identified by the user. Every subsequent follower the user receives to that account will be similarly searched against the index to see if the author is a tagged user contained within the user's custom crowd. Say, for example, @jehanhamedi just followed the user's desired Twitter™ handle. If this name exists in the custom crowd, the user will be alerted that he has captured a new member of his target market.

The system may also display performance metrics on a custom-curated crowd. The number of alerts accrued for a particular event or action taken by authors in a custom segment may also be tracked and quantified into perpetuity. In doing so, the aggregation of these events or alerts will serve as a quantifiable representation of performance in that custom-curated segment of Internet authors. These alerts can continue into perpetuity until the crowd containing all tagged authors of interest is deleted from the software platform.

Consider, again, that the act of following a Twitter™ handle is the user's behavior of interest. Let's say that the user's custom-curated crowd consists of 100 target authors and, at the present time, 10 of them follow him on Twitter™. Therefore, the user's current crowd penetration (which may also be described as a variant of a “follower rate”) with this crowd is 10%. Fast-forward one week: The user posts several new messages through his Twitter™ account, including a sponsored one, and sees that he has gained new followers. In this example, the user received 10 new followers in the week. The system searches for these authors within the user's crowd and identifies that 5 of the new followers are indeed contained within the crowd. As a result, crowd penetration has now grown to 15% (15/100) in that segment. The user can view this percentage change in performance in that crowd and even compare it to other crowds he may have defined with the system. This figure may also be compared to the total number of that account's followers to determine, for example, the proportion of crowd members to general followers at a given time.

In this way, the system allows for the creation of benchmarks and other comparative measures to gauge, on a continuous basis, the user's performance in a target crowd at the present time relative to the total performance that is achievable in that crowd, i.e. the denominator, at that time. By calculating percentage changes and other raw measurements over time with respect to each of these actions, the user is able to create and monitor his or her own custom, market share-like performance indicators for each author crowd he or she wishes to target.

The system may also include capabilities for benchmarking and ongoing monitoring. The system can provide a display that acts as a dashboard monitoring the activity of the advertiser's crowds on each advertising medium. This display may show any type of market share-like key performance indicators (KPIs), such as percentages of awareness, purchase intent, content relevance, crowd membership growth and crowd penetration, advertising fatigue, priming indicators, degree of topic or brand affinity, loyalty rates, crowd acquisition rates, etc. With each of these metrics there may also be a display of an average score and an anonymous industry leader to help instill a sense of competition and encourage continued activity. The conceptualization of a leaderboard may also use identifiable information of top achievers. Relative rankings in achievement may be determined with respect to performance in the same custom author crowd, a specific category of interest, within some competitor set, or along any other dimension that is capable of being tracked via fluctuation criteria. One or more of the user's crowds may also be included in these achievement calculations. As described, the system can also quantify overall success rates in each custom crowd. In this way, the user can view success measures at a current activity level in relation to the total possible pie at a given time. By having visibility into total possible achievement or relative achievement to other crowds or other advertisers, the advertiser may be incentivized to increase spend levels until reaching 100% or whatever his or her goal may be.

The present system and methods may advantageously help an advertiser think—“Okay, if I am only at 40%, where do my competitors stand?” I don't want to be out-performed; I want to own the greatest consumer mindshare of the people I care about and keep moving the needle towards 100%, before they do.” In that way, the system creates and fosters an arcade-like experience that gamifies advertising expenditures and the user experience for the software user. This model can create value for all parties involved. An advertiser may use the present system instead of something like sponsoring a TV show or a golf event where the advertiser has less information on who actually sees and engages with his or her campaign.

In an illustrative embodiment, multiple custom author groupings are compiled and available for selection or display. In this embodiment, statistical summaries of each of a user's custom author groupings can be displayed on one web page or a set of web pages, or within the interface of a software product. Such a collection of one user's custom author groupings may be referred to as a whitelist. The user may use that whitelist as the sole and primary content source for analysis, allowing the user to track and perform measurements on the behaviors, expressions, and other fluctuations of that specific group of authors (i.e. the search results) in isolation. By performing measurements on the activities of a specifically-defined crowd, the user is able to determine, for example, the size of a certain crowd of users or discussion group, as well as determine applicable audience activation and user acquisition metrics for that crowd. These measurements will help the user learn if his or her recent initiatives on any one or set of social media channels are positively impacting these metrics. These metrics can be referenced on an ongoing basis into the future.

The user may also decide to set up new programs around a crowd that may include executing targeted marketing and advertising programs via a social network's advertising platform or any other marketing optimization, analysis, engagement, or technology platform described elsewhere in the present application that may specifically be directed to reach this author set. The user may set up activity-based alerts to notify him of certain actions taken by these crowd members or changes within the size and makeup of the crowd overall. For example, did people in the custom crowd, Pepsi™ Lovers, just follow @CocaCola™ on Twitter™ after they saw a promoted ad for Diet Coke™? The user can also compare and contrast other custom author groupings he or she created along any of the same measures.

The system allows for comparison and tracking of two or more customized crowds against each other for the purpose of determining relative achievement and performance. This comparative measure may be a quantification of a desired action taken by certain authors in a crowd against the total crowd or comparisons along any of the metrics aforementioned. For example, the user may decide to compare two custom defined crowds versus viewing one in isolation to determine relative activation (or author acquisition) levels with respect to the total number of social media authors in a crowd or against any other control group. The user may also wish to determine whether he or she was more effective in activating crowd A or crowd B after executing campaigns during a certain time period. In another embodiment, the user may not even define these comparison crowds himself with the system; there may be potential to compare a user-defined crowd to a crowd defined by other users of the system or to a sample crowd or any collection of sample crowds already provided by the system.

In an illustrative embodiment, an advertising or marketing campaign executed directly through or in conjunction with the system by a user may be used to capture more customer data. For example, a promotion on a social network may allow authors to participate in the promotion upon giving the user an e-mail address or mobile phone number to receive the offer. This may be an effective way to acquire new information about authors in the crowd which can be stored in customer relationship management (CRM) databases maintained either in the present system or separately by the user.

Advantageously, the present system and methods allows a user to target and analyze the activities of authors across multiple social networks such as Facebook™ TWitter™, Tumblr™, LinkedIn™ Pinterest™, etc. As a result, the system also has the capability of facilitating both the targeting and retargeting of social media users across multiple social networking sites. That is, finding and serving promotional content to the same person when he or she is on each platform. The system can thus function as a neutral third party platform between social networks where neither party needs to worry about divulging valuable information to the other, yet both parties benefit from increased advertising interest. The user of the system can create custom, storable audience segments on a third party platform.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating computing devices 100 and 145 and a server 125 that may be used in accordance with an illustrative embodiment. In alternative embodiments, fewer, additional, and/or different components may be included in the system. In FIG. 1, there is a computing device 100, a server 125, and a computing device 145. The computing device 100 includes a processor 115 that is coupled to a memory 105. The processor 115 can store and recall data and applications in the memory 105. The processor 115 may also display objects, applications, data, etc. on the interface/display 110. The processor 115 may also receive inputs through the interface/display 110. The processor 115 is also coupled to a transceiver 120. With this configuration, the processor 115, and subsequently the computing device 100, can communicate with other devices, such as the server 125 through a connection 170.

The server 125 includes a processor 135 that is coupled to a memory 130. The processor 135 can store and recall data and applications in the memory 130. The processor 135 is also coupled to a transceiver 140. With this configuration, the processor 135, and subsequently the server 125, can communicate with other devices, such as the computing device 100 through a connection 170.

The computing device 145 includes a processor 155 that is coupled to a memory 150. The processor 155 can store and recall data and applications in the memory 150. The processor 155 is also coupled to a transceiver 160. The processor 155 may also display objects, applications, data, etc. on the interface/display 165. The processor 155 may also receive inputs through the interface/display 165. With this configuration, the processor 155, and subsequently the computing device 145, can communicate with other devices, such as the server 125 through a connection 175.

The devices shown in the illustrative embodiment may be utilized in various ways. For example, any of the connections 170 and 175 may be varied. Any of the connections 170 and 175 may be a hard wired connection. A hard wired connection may involve connecting the devices through a USB (universal serial bus) port, serial port, parallel port, or other type of wired connection that can facilitate the transfer of data and information between a processor of a device and a second processor of a second device, such as between the server 125 and the computing device 165. In another embodiment, any of the connections 170 and 175 may be a dock where one device may plug into another device. While plugged into a dock, the client-device may also have its batteries charged or otherwise be serviced. In other embodiments, any of the connections 170 and 175 may be a wireless connection. These connections may take the form of any sort of wireless connection, including but not limited to Bluetooth connectivity, Wi-Fi connectivity, or another wireless protocol. Other possible modes of wireless communication may include near-field communications, such as passive radio-frequency identification (RFID) and active (RFID) technologies. RFID and similar near-field communications may allow the various devices to communicate in short range when they are placed proximate to one another. In an embodiment using near field communication, two devices may have to physically (or very nearly) come into contact, and one or both of the devices may sense various data such as acceleration, position, orientation, velocity, change in velocity, IP address, and other sensor data. The system can then use the various sensor data to confirm a transmission of data over the internet between the two devices. In yet another embodiment, the devices may connect through an internet (or other network) connection. That is, any of the connections 170 and 175 may represent several different computing devices and network components that allow the various devices to communicate through the internet, either through a hard-wired or wireless connection. Any of the connections 170 and 175 may also be a combination of several modes of connection.

To operate different embodiments of the system or programs disclosed herein, the various devices may communicate in different ways. For example, the computing device 100 and computing device 145 may download various software applications from the server 125 through the internet. Such software applications may allow the various devices in FIG. 1 to perform some or all of the processes and functions described herein. In another embodiment, the computing devices 100 and 145 may operate using internet browsers that can access websites that perform the functionality of any of the systems and methods disclosed herein. For example, a user of the system and methods disclosed herein may be able to use a computer, laptop, smartphone, etc. to access web pages provided by the system. The user could perform searches for custom author groups, save custom author groups, view analysis of those custom author groups, etc. as disclosed herein using only a website with various interfaces and web pages. Additionally, the embodiments disclosed herein are not limited to being performed only on the disclosed devices in FIG. 1. It will be appreciated that many various combinations of computing devices may execute the methods and systems disclosed herein. Examples of such computing devices may include smart phones, personal computers, servers, laptop computers, tablets, blackberries, RFID enabled devices, or any combinations of such devices.

In one embodiment, a download of a program to the computing device 100 involves the processor 115 receiving data through the transceiver 120 from the transceiver 140 of the server 125. The processor 115 may store the data (like the program) in the memory 105. The processor 115 can execute the program at any time. In other embodiments, the computing device 145 may download programs in a similar manner to the client-device. In another embodiment, some aspects of a program may not be downloaded to the computing device 100 and computing device 145. For example, the program may be an application that accesses additional data or resources located in the server 125. In another example, the program may be an internet-based application, where the program is executed by a web browser and stored almost exclusively in the server 125. In the latter example, only temporary files and/or a web browser may be used on the computing device 100 or computing device 145 in order to execute the program, system, application, etc.

In yet another embodiment, once downloaded to the computing device 100, the program may operate in whole or in part without communication with the server 125. In this embodiment, the computing device 100 may access or communicate with the server 125 only when acquiring the program, system, application, etc. through the connection 170. In other embodiments, a constant or intermittent connection 170 may exist between the server 125 and the computing device 100. Where an intermittent connection exists, the computing device 100 may only need to communicate data to or receive data from the server 125 occasionally.

The configuration of the server 125, the computing device 100, and the computing device 145 is merely one physical system on which the disclosed embodiments may be executed. Other configurations of the devices shown may exist to practice the disclosed embodiments. Further, configurations of additional or fewer devices than the ones shown in FIG. 1 may exist to practice the disclosed embodiments. Additionally, the devices shown in FIG. 1 may be combined to allow for fewer devices or separated where more than the four devices shown exist in a system.

In some embodiments, the devices shown in FIG. 1 may be existing devices that are owned or possessed by a user, author in a crowd, other author, system administrator, etc. using the embodiments disclosed herein. In such an embodiment, the author or user may only need to download software (e.g., an application or ‘app’) to the existing device to execute the various embodiments disclosed herein. In other embodiments, specialized hardware may be used by the author or user that is specifically designed to perform or execute the various embodiments disclosed herein. As such, hardware may be specifically designed to provide such capabilities.

In an illustrative embodiment, the computing device 100 is used by a user of the system and methods disclosed herein. The computing device 100 may be used to search for authors, create/specify custom author groups, and review the results of the monitoring of those custom author groups. A user may further utilize the computing device 100 to implement advertising or marketing campaigns, or interact with and otherwise create content for the internet that may not explicitly be advertising, or perform any other functions as disclosed herein. The computing device 145 is used by an author. The author can join social networks, follow Twitter™ handles, like pages, send messages and chats, receive e-mail, author online content, navigate the internet, make purchases, trigger events, etc. or perform any other functions as disclosed herein. The server 125 facilitates and hosts the system and methods that are disclosed herein. It may store for the custom author groupings, calculate and monitor those groupings, and provides the computing device 100 access to the features that are disclosed throughout the present application.

FIG. 2 is a flow diagram illustrating a method 200 of determining fluctuations in a social media custom author group in accordance with an illustrative embodiment. In alternative embodiments, fewer, additional, and/or different operations may be performed. Also, the use of a flow diagram is not meant to be limiting with respect to the order of operations performed. In an operation 205, the system receives search criteria for authors. The search criteria may be a demographic or user profile trait of an author, a subject matter of a social media post authored by an author, a related subject matter of a predetermined number of social media posts authored by an author, a group association of an author, an affirmative activity executed through the online social network of author, or any other search criteria as discussed elsewhere in the present application. The search may be performed by a user entering text on their own through an input such as a keyboard. The search may also be performed by selecting parameters from a menu such as a drop down menu. For example, a user may be able to select a desired gender, age, home state, time zone, etc. of an author from a drop down menu. Additionally, the search could be automatically populated based on past searches. In other words, a user may be able to save past searches so that he or she does not have to remember the exact parameters he or she has previously entered. This may allow the user to run the same search again or use the populated information to ensure that they do not run the same search again. The user may want to tweak the search only slightly. In one embodiment, the search fields may be automatically populated with the most recent search parameters. In another embodiment, the interface for searching may also include a button that the user can select to clear or set to a default of the fields that are used for searching. In yet another embodiment, the user may be able to view a news feed-like thread of recent custom author crowd searches performed by other users of the system. The user may also apply filters with certain criteria to limit the amount of content that is played.

In an operation 210, the search criteria is used to determine a custom author crowd. In this embodiment, the search criteria can be used to perform a search after receiving an input from the user. If the search results are to the user's liking, another input can be received from the user to indicate that the user would like a custom author crowd created. The custom author crowd is created. The user may be presented with an opportunity to name the custom author crowd, making it easier to identify who is in the crowd, why the crowd was searched or created, or some other identification that the user specifies. The custom author crowd specified at 210 is saved and monitored based on fluctuation criteria.

In an operation 215, the system determines a fluctuation of the custom author crowd based on author posts and/or other actions. The other actions may be a variety of author actions such as retweeting, liking, commenting, purchasing, or any other author action or interaction as disclosed and discussed throughout the present application. These posts and actions signal when an author or number of authors has been activated within the crowd. Thus, fluctuation criteria specified by the user may also be referred to as activation criteria.

FIG. 3 is a flow diagram illustrating a method 300 of monitoring a social media custom author group and sending an alert when fluctuations of author postings reach a predetermined threshold in accordance with an illustrative embodiment. In alternative embodiments, fewer, additional, and/or different operations may be performed. Also, the use of a flow diagram is not meant to be limiting with respect to the order of operations performed. In an operation 305, the system receives search criteria from the user. This search criteria is used to search for authors or groups of authors. The search criteria may be a variety of demographic factors or online actions or interactions performed by the author, as discussed at length elsewhere in the present application. Similarly, in an operation 310, the search criteria is used to determine a custom author crowd as discussed throughout the present application.

In an operation 315, the system determines how many authors in the custom author crowd can be characterized as being a part of a community, where the parameters of the community is specified by the user of the system. In other words, the system is determining a magnitude or number of authors in the custom author crowd that have met a fluctuation criteria. For example, the fluctuation criteria may be whether an author has liked a sponsored page for pizza. In the operation 315, the system determines how many authors in the custom author crowd already have liked the sponsored page for pizza. In this embodiment, the search criteria and the fluctuation criteria are different. In an alternative embodiment, the search criteria and the fluctuation criteria may be the same.

In an operation 320, the system saves the custom author crowd and the number and identity of authors that were determined to be part of the community in the operation 315. In this embodiment, all authors in the custom author crowd and their associated profiles are saved as the custom author crowd. In an alternative embodiment, identifiers of each account are stored in a list that serves as the custom author crowd. Any other information relating to the authors may be stored separately but can be referred to using the author identifiers. Similarly, an identification or identifier may be stored with the author account or identifier that indicates whether a particular author is part of the community or another social following. In this embodiment, the system determines if the authors in the custom author crowd are part of one community. In an alternative embodiment, the system may determine if the authors in the custom author crowd are a part of multiple communities. For example, the system may determine whether the authors in a custom author crowd have been activated, that is, if the authors have posted something indicating their interest or activation in a subject. For example, authors may like, follow, author, etc. a post about fashion. The system may then determine how many authors in the custom author group have been activated to be interested in fashion (part of the fashion community). The system may, in addition to the more general fashion community, determine how many of the authors in the custom author group are part of a particular fan base. For example, the system may determine how many of the authors in the custom author group have liked, followed, etc. the clothier J. Crew™. In this way, a user may be able to determine how many authors in the custom author group are activated, and how many authors are in an owned community such as a particular brand. The system may utilize this functionality to compare the owned community to the broader community. In other words, the system could determine what proportion of the activated community is part of a particular owned community. In this way, the user may be able to more accurately track their own brand (or owned community) or that of a competitor.

In an operation 325, the custom author crowd is monitored over time to determine whether authors in the custom author crowd meet the fluctuation criteria and are subsequently characterized as being part of the community. In an operation 330, an alert is sent to the user when the number of authors in the community has reached a predetermined threshold. In an alternative embodiment, the user is alerted whenever an author in the custom author crowd is characterized as joining the community. In another alternative embodiment, the user is alerted based on a schedule. For example, the alert may be sent once a week and update the user on how many authors have left, joined, or stayed in the community. Other various information or statistics may be included with the alert.

FIG. 4 is a flow diagram illustrating a method 400 of comparing fluctuations in multiple social media custom author groupings in accordance with an illustrative embodiment. In alternative embodiments, fewer, additional, and/or different operations may be performed. Also, the use of a flow diagram is not meant to be limiting with respect to the order of operations performed. In an operation 405, a first search criteria is received from a user. The first search criteria may be received similar to the search criteria discussed above with respect to operation 205 of FIG. 2.

In an operation 410, the first search criteria is used to determine a first custom author crowd. The determining of the first custom author crowd may be performed similar to the determining a custom author crowd 210 discussed above with respect to operation 210 of FIG. 2.

In an operation 415, a second search criteria is received from a user. The first search criteria may be received similar to the search criteria discussed above with respect to operation 205 of FIG. 2. In an operation 420, the second search criteria is used to determine a second custom crowd. The determining of the second custom author crowd may be performed similar to the determining a custom author crowd 210 discussed above with respect to operation 210 of FIG. 2.

In an operation 425, the system monitors the first and second custom author crowds over time for fluctuations of authors in the first and second custom author crowds who over time leave or join a community, i.e. become activated. The monitoring may be similar to operation 215 of FIG. 2 and/or operation 325 of FIG. 3. In this embodiment, the fluctuation criteria monitored for is the same for both the monitoring of the first custom author crowd and the second custom author crowd. In an alternative embodiment, a different fluctuation criteria may be used or specified for the first custom author crowd and the second custom author crowd. The monitoring determines how many authors in each crowd have joined or left the community, and at what time these events occur.

In an operation 430, the system calculates differences in fluctuations of authors in the first and second custom author crowds joining or leaving the community. In other words, the fluctuations within the first and second custom author crowds are compared. The differences in fluctuations of the first and second custom author crowds may indicate that certain strategies or content proved more effective at getting one crowd over the other to join the community (i.e. to become activated within some specific context), to opt into a marketing offer, to join the fan base of specific social account, etc. In an alternative embodiment, many other statistics, comparisons, and ratios may be calculated as disclosed herein. In another embodiment, the system may compare and monitor more than two custom author crowds.

FIG. 5 is a flow diagram illustrating a method 500 of measuring effectiveness of an engagement and/or advertisement campaign based on the monitoring of a social media custom author grouping in accordance with an illustrative embodiment. In alternative embodiments, fewer, additional, and/or different operations may be performed. Also, the use of a flow diagram is not meant to be limiting with respect to the order of operations performed. In an operation 505, a custom author crowd is established. The establishment of a custom author crowd may be performed using steps similar to operations 205 and 210 of FIG. 2. In an operation 510, the system determines how many of the authors in the custom author crowd may be characterized as part of the community. This determining may be similar to operation 315 as discussed above with respect to FIG. 3.

In an operation 515, an engagement and/or advertisement campaign is executed by or in conjunction with the system disclosed herein. This may be running an advertisement, posting sponsored content online, sending out print media, running a commercial, tweeting something from an official account, prioritizing particular content on a social networking website, retweeting a post, or any other sort of engagement or advertisement campaign that can be executed online or offline. In this embodiment, the user executes the engagement and/or advertisement campaign using the present system. That is, the user may be able to post and or schedule to be posted advertisements, sponsored content, unsponsored content, etc. utilizing the system. In an alternative embodiment, the engagement and/or advertising campaign may be executed outside the framework of the presently disclosed system and methods. That is, the user or party related to the user may execute an engagement and/or advertisement campaign utilizing a different electronic system, or the campaign may not be online at all. For example, the user may execute an engagement and/or advertisement campaign on a different website, may send out paper mailers, e-mails, run a promotion in stores for or related to a product or products, etc.

In an operation 520, the custom author crowd is monitored for one or more fluctuation criteria. The fluctuation criteria may be interacting with sponsored content such as commenting on, reading, or retweeting the content. The fluctuation criteria may also be joining an online affinity group or following a particular individual or brand page or account. Another monitored fluctuation criteria may be whether the author actually authors a post regarding sponsored content, the advertising campaign, or the subject of the advertising campaign. Other fluctuation criteria that may be monitored are disclosed throughout the present application.

In an operation 525, the system determines metrics of how the community and/or the custom author group changed based on the monitored fluctuation criteria. This can inform the user how effective the engagement, marketing and/or advertising program was. The metrics may be many various calculations as described herein. For example, the metrics may include number of authors who joined the community during the advertisement campaign or a set amount of time after the campaign, percentage change of authors in the custom author crowd who joined the community, number of authors who joined a corporate fan base or a celebrity brand endorser's following, etc.

FIG. 6 is a flow diagram illustrating a method 600 of defining, monitoring, and using a custom author grouping to run a marketing campaign in accordance with an illustrative embodiment. In alternative embodiments, fewer, additional, and/or different operations may be performed. Also, the use of a flow diagram is not meant to be limiting with respect to the order of operations performed. In an operation 605, the user defines the parameters for an author search. In an operation 610, the search for authors is executed based on the parameters defined by the user.

In an operation 615, the authors that match the search parameters are located and grouped together in a custom author crowd. In an operation 620, the group of authors, or crowd, are added to an editable whitelist. The whitelist, as described elsewhere in the present application, is a list (including an interface) where different custom author crowds can be viewed, sorted, configured, deleted, etc.

In an operation 625, the whitelist (and subsequently the custom author crowds stored therein) is monitored to collect data and fluctuations in the crowds based on fluctuation criteria determined by the user and/or preset in the system. In an operation 630, custom, event-based alerts are defined by the user. For example, the user may wish to receive an alert whenever an author leaves his or her community. In another example, the user may wish to receive an alert whenever a particular fluctuation criteria changes such that when a predetermined threshold (which can be set by the user) is reached the alert is sent. In another example, the user may wish to get an alert if the fluctuation criteria for one custom author crowd is a higher value than the fluctuation criteria for a second custom author crowd. Other alerts may be set and defined, such as other alerts as defined elsewhere in the present disclosure.

In an operation 635, an alert is sent to the user indicating that an event has occurred. Stated another way, the system has determined that a particular fluctuation criteria is met as defined by the user, so an alert is automatically generated and sent to the user by the system. The alert may be sent in varying ways. For example, the alert may be sent by instant message, short message service (SMS) text, e-mail, tweet, fax, message system viewable in the presently disclosed system interface, etc.

In an operation 640, custom author crowds are compared to other custom author crowds in the whitelist. These comparisons may be done using varying methods as disclosed throughout the present disclosure. Additionally, the comparison may include calculations of particular metrics or indicators based on the comparisons.

In an operation 645, the user can specify and execute a new marketing program based on alerts received and/or additional information displayed by the system. In other words, the user can start an advertising campaign based on an alert received. The user may also wish to access the features of the full system and may view additional information that informs their decision of whether to initiate an advertisement campaign and what type of campaign that might be. Additionally, the user may have pre-programmed one or more advertising campaigns into the system or another adjoining system or systems that could be accessed by the system disclosed herein. In this embodiment the user can then just select that advertising campaign to commence as soon as the user receives an alert. In an alternative embodiment, an advertisement campaign may be initiated by the system automatically when a certain alert condition exists. In this embodiment, the alert sent to the user may include the alert information as well as a notification that the advertisement campaign was initiated automatically. In another embodiment, the execution of an advertisement campaign may be facilitated via an application programming interface (API) that may allow the user to integrate intelligence generated and provided by this system into other cross-channel advertising strategies and initiatives that may leverage other software applications. Thusly, the presently disclosed system may also aid the user in optimizing other programs that are not entirely managed via this system. In other words, the user may be able to access other programs through interactions between the presently disclosed system and another program. In this example, the user may wish to execute a marketing program. A link to marketing program software may be inserted into an interface for a software, application, or web page. Although the marketing plan in this example is not executed by the present system, capabilities to execute marketing plans can be incorporated into the present system.

The methodology and components described herein may be used for broader applications that combine search functionality, whitelist creation, and custom measurements and alerts to form a custom search monitor beyond social media. Custom search monitors can be applied to help users research any topic and compare custom results to another dataset (similar to comparing a target crowd to an existing social community) where item records are capable of being queried in a database. Further, a custom search monitor may operate with direct database access or it may leverage a web crawler to extract data and populate an index, which is then searchable by the user. In another embodiment, a separate database is created where new data is added by executing frequent API calls of another database or by manual input.

In an alternative embodiment, a custom search monitor may be applied to a store inventory database to alert a user when a new product he wants is in stock at his local retailer or when the product goes on sale, adds a new feature/color, etc. The product types and fluctuation criteria may be specified by the user after a search of all records and then tracked to capture fluctuations in specific attributes of interest. Users may even use this method to compare one retailer or distributor against another along the same dimensions. That is, the user may have an open search monitor running for the products he is interested in spanning multiple stores' databases. A custom search monitor may also be applied in the context of product user reviews as well. In that way, a user may be alerted when the products or services he is interested in cross a certain threshold in terms of the volume or sentiment of ratings, or overall rating score.

In an alternative embodiment, a custom search monitor may be applied to a database of job listings where the user can search and tag target companies he or she is interested in applying to for a job at the present time or at some time in the future. The system may then alert the user to changes to that company's job listings, when new roles are posted, when specific skills and competencies are mentioned in the job requirements, or according to any other fluctuation criteria. The system may also provide new metrics to the user; for example, the system may calculate the frequency and percentage of hires in certain functional areas versus others, and may even provide benchmarking criteria on similar candidates as the user. Another embodiment may compare these job listings to the data contained in a digital version of the user's resume and alert the user when keywords or other criteria match new listings. That is, a job opportunity may not solely be surfaced based on matching company or job title; it could be surfaced through the presence of certain keywords or any other criteria located in the job description or company profile. In another embodiment, fluctuation criteria may include online mentions of the prospective company or specific online activity of its employees and stakeholders that match the parameters provided by the user.

In an alternative embodiment, a custom search monitor may be applied in the context of financial securities and investment decision-making. The system may allow the user to search a database containing various data on available debt, equity, or derivative securities that meet certain parameters. The system may then allow the user to create a whitelist of the securities that he is interested in tracking in either the short-term or long-term. Fluctuation criteria may vary widely depending on the user's investment and trading strategy. Examples of fluctuation criteria include but are not intended to be limited to monitoring securities for changes in interest rates, dividend yield, risk metrics, stock price, strike price, share price volatility, moving averages, weighted averages, 52-week averages, price to earnings (P/E) ratio, debt/equity ratio, revenue figures, reported net income, profitability indicators such as ROA, recent news announcements and public postings containing specific information, etc. Such metrics and measurements may be leveraged in conjunction with other technical analysis. Advantageously, the system may alert the user when certain fluctuation criteria may signal a favorable investment condition. The user could then use this intelligence provided by the system to optimize his or her trading and investment strategies, and inform the timing and execution of new trades or other subsequent actions.

In an alternative embodiment, a custom search monitor may be applied to a setting in which a user wants to improve the frequency, timing and relevance of communications to important contacts. By accessing a database of information from different media accounts, such as social media friends/followers/connections, discussion forums, target author crowds, a mobile phonebook, email and text messaging accounts, etc., the user could search for and tag contact records he wants to prioritize for networking, relationship-building purposes, or other outreach purposes. Search parameters may include things such as company affiliation, university alumni, professional groups, geographic region, age, keyword or topic mention, interest, image or video share, etc. These and other custom fluctuation criteria when met may trigger an alert to the user. The system may also deliver an alert after a pre-defined amount of time has elapsed or when a certain number of contacts in a specific grouping have messaged him. In another embodiment, the system may display an activity summary for a certain time period, which would give the user a digest about past conversations with this target contact list and relevant outreach and success metrics. Furthermore, this group of contacts can be tracked independently of all outbound communications made by the user via the accounts he has connected to the system. Thusly, the system may inform the user when he is not regularly communicating with the people who he deemed are important in proportion to his total outbound communications over a certain time period. In another embodiment, the system may create the feeling of a challenge for the user to accomplish pre-defined short and long-term goals and provide incentives for doing so. In yet another embodiment, the system may help inspire the type, substance, and timing of the next message sent by the user to one or more contacts based on historical context and the unique activation criteria for that contact grouping. For example, say the user had sent a text message to a specific crowd of target contacts on Day 0 about fantasy football prospects. This text message “campaign” had a 100% response rate, effectively initiating a dialogue with all of his targets. Further, these target contacts were in turn 50× more likely to start a new conversation with the user, absent any prompt, within the next 14 days. This was a significant improvement from his past work-related conversation attempts. As a result, the user may decide to specify fantasy football as new fluctuation criteria. That is, the next time this particular crowd becomes activated on the topic of fantasy football, the user may then be alerted to initiate a subsequent dialogue. Context-specific relationship-building may be nurtured in a systematic fashion thusly.

In an alternative embodiment, a custom search monitor may be applied to service offerings as well. In a travel use case, a user may search a database of hotels rooms or flights to locate and track preferred seating arrangements, room accommodations, and travel dates to a specific destination as part of his travel plan. The system may then alert the user when there are fluctuations in variables that may explicitly influence his plans e.g. the ticket price drops or new seats with extra leg room become available, or perhaps there is a new amenity offered to him as a traveler. In the event that the user has already made the booking, the system may compare the data on his booked trip to other options occurring at the same time and notify him of any potentially preferable alternatives that may influence a booking change.

In an alternative embodiment, a custom search monitor may also apply to users making doctor appointments. The system may allow a user to search a database of doctors by specifying parameters, such as area of specialty, geographic region of practice, # of years in practice, required co-pay, accepted insurance plans, having a degree from a particular school, etc., and then save groups of their preferred doctors for treatment. The system may then alert users when this grouping meets desired fluctuation criteria, such as appointment openings with doctors, when preferred doctors are added to the user's insurance provider's coverage, or even when these doctors open up another practice in the user's area. A custom search monitor may also be applied in the context of patient reviews of doctors, facilities, treatments, procedures, and prescription drug usage. In that way, a user may be alerted when the specific services he may be considering cross a certain threshold in terms of the volume or sentiment of ratings, or overall rating score. This information may be useful to different users for benchmarking, evaluation, and research purposes.

In an alternative embodiment, a custom search monitor may be used to track the publishing behavior of target groups of webpages and then alert users when these entities cross a certain threshold in content production or search ranking, viewership rate, preference or relevance metrics, etc. That is, the user may assess competing websites based on content goals, content topics, quantity and frequency of content types (blog, whitepaper, ebook, video, podcast, etc,) keyword use, or along any other attribute or action of interest. The system may also be applied to alert users when webpages located by a search query adjust in content or ranking. The system may use a crawler to create a searchable index of data retrieved from specific website URIs. The system may then categorize content type based on factors such as URI architecture, which it may then use to identify and track when new content in those defined categories are published and then compare it to the entire set of web properties. The system may also leverage direct database access for applications with social media accounts: By creating two crowds each containing one social account and then comparing the two (e.g. @Microsoft™ vs. @Samsung™) the system may use the data to extract the Internet media types and content asset types that were posted and shared by the account most often and track these into perpetuity; this may be a number of jpg files uploaded, a number of gifs, blog mentions in URIs, promoted content, or any other media type or content asset type.

In an alternative embodiment, the system and methods disclosed herein may also be applied to monitoring media libraries that stream entertainment content. Some of the media libraries are available online or through a set top box and television. In this embodiment, the media library may be monitored for specific content such as movies or television shows. If a certain television show becomes available, for example, the user may be alerted to its availability. In another embodiment, the user may be alerted when the status of a certain media changes. For example, the user may be alerted when a television show is transitioned from being available for a fee to being available for free. Further, the systems and methods disclosed herein may also be used to track available content from various media libraries generally. For example, the system may be able to inform a user which media library has the most new material, the most recently added show or movie, or which media library is the largest. If a user is looking for a particular item of media, the user may be able to use the system to search for that media to determine its availability and the conditions of that availability. The user may also determine parameters for a type, length, or genre of media they are looking for. Searching for types, lengths, genres, etc. of media may yield a resulting group of media items. The user may also be able to configure and set custom alerts for that media or group of media. In other illustrative embodiments, the system and methods disclosed herein may also be applied to websites that list real estate sales, rentals, leases, etc. Another illustrative embodiment may be configured to monitor and set up alerts for available parking spots in an area.

In an illustrative embodiment, any of the operations described herein can be implemented at least in part as computer-readable instructions stored on a computer-readable medium or memory. Upon execution of the computer-readable instructions by a processor, the computer-readable instructions can cause a computing device to perform the operations.

The foregoing description of illustrative embodiments has been presented for purposes of illustration and of description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or limiting with respect to the precise form disclosed, and modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings or may be acquired from practice of the disclosed embodiments. It is intended that the scope of the invention be defined by the claims appended hereto and their equivalents. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A system comprising: a memory; and a processor coupled to the memory, wherein the processor is configured to: receive a first search criteria, wherein the first search criteria specifies a first custom author crowd comprising a first plurality of authors in at least one social network, website, application software, or mobile application software (app); receive a second search criteria, wherein the second search criteria specifies a second custom author crowd comprising a second plurality of authors in at least one social network, website, application software, or mobile application software (app); determine a first fluctuation of first content generated by the first custom author crowd, wherein the first fluctuation is a first change in authored content, author action, or author behavior by the first plurality of authors, and further wherein the first change occurs over a period of time and with respect to the first content; determine a second fluctuation of second content generated by the second custom author crowd, wherein the second fluctuation is a second change in authored content, author action, or author behavior by the second plurality of authors, and further wherein the second change occurs over the period of time and with respect to the second content; and determine a fluctuation magnitude difference, wherein the fluctuation magnitude difference indicates a difference between the first fluctuation to the second fluctuation.
 2. The system of claim 1, wherein the first search criteria comprises a demographic trait or user profile trait of the first plurality of authors, a subject matter of a social media post authored by the first plurality of authors, a related subject matter of a predetermined number of social media posts authored by the first plurality of authors, a group association of the first plurality of authors, an interaction by the first plurality of authors with an author of the first custom author crowd or second custom author crowd, an engagement with a content by the first plurality of authors, an amount of time spent viewing a webpage or screen by the first plurality of authors, accessing a webpage or screen by the first plurality of authors, the selection of a universal resource identifier (URI) by the first plurality of authors, or an affirmative or negative activity executed through the online social network, website, application software, or mobile application software (app).
 3. The system of claim 1, wherein the first search criteria comprises a first subject matter of a social media post authored by the first plurality of authors and a second subject matter of the social media post authored by the first plurality of authors, such that any of the at first plurality of authors who have authored a post including the first subject matter or the second subject matter will be included in the first custom author crowd.
 4. The system of claim 1, wherein the processor is further configured to receive a first fluctuation criteria, wherein the first fluctuation criteria indicates a type of authored content, an author action, or an author behavior, and further wherein the first fluctuation is determined according to the first fluctuation criteria.
 5. The system of claim 4, wherein the processor is further configured to receive a second fluctuation criteria, wherein the second fluctuation criteria indicates a second type of authored content, a second author action, or a second author behavior, and further wherein the second fluctuation is determined according to the second fluctuation criteria.
 6. The system of claim 5, wherein the first fluctuation criteria and the second fluctuation criteria indicate a same type of authored content, author action, or author behavior.
 7. The system of claim 1, wherein the processor is further configured to: send a message to the first custom author crowd or post the message such that it is viewable to the first custom author crowd; and determine a number or activity of authors in the first custom author crowd who respond to, engage with, or author content related to the message, wherein the number or activity of authors is used to determine the first fluctuation and wherein the first custom author crowd comprises at least one author on a second social media website.
 8. A method comprising: receiving, by a processor of a computing device, a first search criteria, wherein the first search criteria specifies a first custom author crowd comprising a first plurality of authors in at least one social network, website, application software, or mobile application software (app); receiving, by the processor, a second search criteria, wherein the second search criteria specifies a second custom author crowd comprising a second plurality of authors in at least one social network, website, application software, or mobile application software (app); determining, by the processor, a first fluctuation of first content generated by the first custom author crowd, wherein the first fluctuation is a first change in authored content, author action, or author behavior by the first plurality of authors, and further wherein the first change occurs over a period of time and with respect to the first content; determining, by the processor, a second fluctuation of second content generated by the second custom author crowd, wherein the second fluctuation is a second change in authored content, author action, or author behavior by the second plurality of authors, and further wherein the second change occurs over the period of time and with respect to the second content; and determining, by the processor, a fluctuation magnitude difference, wherein the fluctuation magnitude difference indicates a difference between the first fluctuation to the second fluctuation.
 9. The method of claim 8, wherein the first fluctuation is determined by: receiving, by the processor, a first fluctuation criteria, wherein the first fluctuation criteria indicates a type of authored content, an author action, or an author behavior; determining, by the processor, at a first point in time, a first magnitude of authors in the first custom author crowd that have authored content, performed an author action, or performed an author behavior that meets the first fluctuation criteria; determining, by the processor, at a second point in time, a second magnitude of authors in the first custom author crowd that have authored content, performed an author action, or performed an author behavior that meets the first fluctuation criteria; and determining, by the processor, a difference between the first magnitude of authors and the second magnitude of authors, wherein the difference is the first fluctuation.
 10. The method of claim 9, further comprising receiving, by the processor, a predetermined elapsed time, wherein the predetermined elapsed time represents an amount of time that must pass between the determining at the first point in time and the determining at the second point in time.
 11. The method of claim 9, further comprising calculating, by the processor, a percentage of change between the first magnitude of authors and the second magnitude of authors using the difference.
 12. The method of claim 8, further comprising determining, by the processor, whether the fluctuation magnitude difference is equal to or greater than a predetermined threshold.
 13. The method of claim 12, further comprising sending, by the processor, an alert indicating that the fluctuation magnitude difference is equal to or greater than a predetermined threshold.
 14. The method of claim 8, further comprising determining, by the processor, whether the fluctuation magnitude difference has reached a magnitude equal to or greater than a predetermined threshold within a predetermined amount of time.
 15. The method of claim 14, further comprising sending, by the processor, an alert indicating that the fluctuation magnitude difference has reached a magnitude equal to or greater than the predetermined threshold within the predetermined amount of time.
 16. The method of claim 8, further comprising receiving, by the processor, a request for the first magnitude, wherein the request indicates an instruction to calculate the first magnitude for the period time, wherein the period of time is calculated between a first point in time and a second point in time, and further wherein the second point in time is a current time such that the first magnitude calculated is a real time indication of the first magnitude.
 17. The method of claim 8, further comprising: determining, by the processor, whether the first fluctuation has reached a magnitude equal to or greater than a predetermined threshold; and sending, by the processor, an alert indicating that the first magnitude has reached the magnitude equal to or greater than the predetermined threshold.
 18. The method of claim 17, wherein the alert comprises a recommended action to take related to the first fluctuation or the first custom author crowd.
 19. The method of claim 18, wherein the determining whether the first fluctuation has reached the magnitude occurs continuously and in real time.
 20. The method of claim 8, further comprising: retrieving, by the processor, data from web pages with a web crawler or API; populating, by the processor, an index with the data from the web pages; and determining, by the processor, the first custom author crowd from the index based on the first search criteria.
 21. The method of claim 20, further comprising: compiling the index into a direct access database; and determining, by the processor, the first author crowd from the direct access database based on the first search criteria.
 22. The method of claim 8, wherein: the fluctuation magnitude difference quantifies a difference between responses to an advertisement, sponsored content post, unsponsored content post, or other online or offline stimuli between the first custom author crowd and the second custom author crowd, the first custom author crowd response is to a controlled content or stimuli, and the second custom author crowd response is to a competitor content or stimuli.
 23. A non-transitory computer readable medium having instructions stored thereon that, upon execution by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising: receiving a first search criteria, wherein the first search criteria specifies a first custom author crowd comprising a first plurality of authors in at least one social network, website, application software, or mobile application software (app); receiving a second search criteria, wherein the second search criteria specifies a second custom author crowd comprising a second plurality of authors in at least one social network, website, application software, or mobile application software (app); determining a first fluctuation of first content generated by the first custom author crowd, wherein the first fluctuation is a first change in authored content, author action, or author behavior by the first plurality of authors, and further wherein the first change occurs over a period of time and with respect to the first content; determining a second fluctuation of second content generated by the second custom author crowd, wherein the second fluctuation is a second change in authored content, author action, or author behavior by the second plurality of authors, and further wherein the second change occurs over the period of time and with respect to the second content; and determining a fluctuation magnitude difference, wherein the fluctuation magnitude difference indicates a difference between the first fluctuation to the second fluctuation.
 24. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 23, wherein the fluctuation magnitude difference quantifies a difference of a response to an advertisement, sponsored content post, unsponsored content post, or other online or offline stimuli between the first custom author crowd and the second custom author crowd.
 25. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 23, wherein the fluctuation magnitude difference quantifies a difference between a first response to a first advertisement by the first custom author crowd and a second response to a second advertisement by the second custom author crowd.
 26. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 23, further comprising sending to a subset of authors in the first custom author crowd an opportunity to interact with paid or unpaid media, wherein the subset of authors are authors in the first custom author crowd that have authored or interacted with content that determines the first fluctuation. 